


The New Life

by mydogwatson



Series: Virtual Postcard Tales [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Companion Piece, M/M, Sad John Watson, different first meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: This is a companion piece to The Story of My Life, telling John’s story. Down and out in London.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Virtual Postcard Tales [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827328
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60





	The New Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a story I had intended to write, but when the title emerged from my stack of postcards, it seemed inevitable. You all had such a lovely response to The Story of My Life and I thank you for that. I do hope you will enjoy this one as well. As always, I love hearing from you.

Twenty steps.

One end of the room to the other.

Thirteen and a half steps across.

Dirty magnolia walls. Generations of grime in the tiny shower and a permanent ring in the gurgling toilet. In the room to the left of mine resided a recovering alcoholic who was a former naval officer. Actually, the recovering part had not really won out yet, so I did wonder how he had managed to talk his way out of the in-patient treatment. Possibly they just needed the bed.

Not my business, though.

On the other side was a ex-sniper who had actually been in Afghanistan while I was. Don’t think we ever met, though. I only knew who he was because the drunk told me. The sniper never spoke to me. Sometimes he cried at night, which I would hear only because my own nightmares had woken me again. It almost got to the point where I welcomed the drunk’s incoherent shouting because it drowned out both the weeping and my moaning.

_We few, we happy few, we band of brothers._

No idea who lived in the other rooms.

*

My pleasant, but useless, therapist thought that maybe I welcomed the drunk’s shouting because it was a familiar background noise. I regretted ever telling her about my father. “Why would I find that comforting?” I asked bitterly.

“I said familiar, not comforting,” she corrected.

Well, I guess it _was_ familiar, in a dreadful kind of way.

Hello, my name is John Watson and my father was a drunk.

I have a memory of a holiday when I was about seven. We were in Blackpool, of course; Blackpool was the site of every holiday my family had. We were on the beach. Harry was restless, walking in circles around our blanket, while listening to music on her cheap CD player. Mum was obsessed with making sure we all had enough suntan cream rubbed on our skin and then reading Women’s Own or paperbacks with with bodices being ripped away by swarthy men. I was arranging the sea rocks I’d collected into a neat line.

My father, who hated sitting on the blanket, was in his low beach chair, drinking the third [or fourth] of his cheap lagers. He was watching me, which was never a good thing. I bent more closely over my collection. “What’re you doing with them bloody rocks?’ he asked me finally.  
“Nothing,” I mumbled.

“Nothing,” he repeated in a squeaky voice meant to sound like me. “Pay all this money to come to the bloody beach and you sit there doing nothing.”

Mum glanced up to take note of how many empty bottles were sitting next to the chair and apparently decided it was still safe to speak. “Oh, leave the boy alone, Henry,” she said. “He likes to play with the things.”

Because I was looking at my rocks, trying to decide if one of them was more blue or more grey, I didn’t see him pick up the football and throw it my way. It was only a toss, so when it hit my head it didn’t really hurt much. But it startled me.

“Harriet,” he said. “Go kick the football around with your brother. Show him how it’s done.”

He was always proud of her athletic skills, at least until she got a little older and it seemed too boyish.

She opened her mouth to argue, but then looked at him and changed her mind. It was a couple more years before she went into the battle mode that would eventually lead her to run away.

For now, Harry and I obeyed his orders, although with zero enthusiasm, while our mother kept reading and our father kept drinking. The shouting came later and it ended up with us being asked to leave the small hotel immediately. We packed the car and Mum drove us through the night back to London.

Ah, memories.

*

We resolved nothing in the session, of course. She told me to keep working on my blog, I nodded meaninglessly, and we parted ways reasonably amicably. It wasn’t her fault, after all, that my life was a hopeless mess. Possibly, it was not my fault either. We were still debating that.

No, I do not miss the irony in the fact that I went to a pub for lunch after my session.

It was the one small treat I could afford, so every week I stopped at The Green Man. One lager and a sandwich. The landlady was always behind the bar and unless I had completely forgotten all the ways of women, she rather fancied me. What there was to fancy in a man approaching middle-age, with an ugly walking stick, a hand that shook and a thousand yard stare, I could not imagine. Maybe the allure of me being a doctor appealed. Albeit an unemployed one. But I tried to hold up my end of the light banter as she served me my lager and gammon sandwich with a bag of Walker’s Salt Vinegar crisps.

She chattered on a bit about...something or other. I listened in the same way that I used to listen to my mother complain about her drunken husband, her disappointing daughter, her son who had no more sense than to join the army. 

When she returned to the bar to deal with the lunch rush, I finished my sandwich and the crisps in peace and sipped the rest of the lager, while I watched the pedestrians outside. The population of London going about its business. Everybody clearly had somewhere important to be. Well, everyone except the man sleeping on the flattened cardboard box outside a shuttered Barclay’s across the road. And me, of course.

I was polite enough to give the landlady a wave as I left.

There was absolutely nothing to lure me back to my sad little room, so I just wandered for a while and watched the capital swirl around me, completely indifferent to my misery.

There was a time when I thought the city would be mine. Not the grotty suburb where I had grown up, but the vast, throbbing city itself. One night, years ago, my friend Mike and I climbed to the roof of St Barts and looked out over the vast field of lights.

“Won’t you miss all of this?” Mike asked. “Marching off to play at being a soldier?”

Deciding not to take offence at the notion that I would be ‘playing’ at anything, I thought about it, then nodded. “Yes, I will. But it won’t be forever and when I get back, I will be ready to take my place here.” Meaning London itself and also St Barts. Christ, I was a pompous arsehole.

As things have turned out, it seems the joke is on me, because there is no place anywhere for me now.

To a casual viewer, Mike, back then, came across as a pleasant, but somewhat boring nonentity, but he was actually quite bright and empathetic. “Are you frightened?” he asked. “Chances are, you might end up in the middle of a war.”

I was young and stupid and so I only shrugged. 

Sometimes I wondered whatever had happened to Mike. But I didn’t care enough to try and find out. Hell, I didn’t even care enough to contact my own sister.

*

Sometimes as I walked, I would think. Odd bits of my past would occur to me.

Her name was Melinda and we met in Advanced Biology class.

My rugby mates always joked that I had a type. Taller than me, brunette, clever.

I simply pointed out that most women were taller than me. And who would want to date a stupid girl? As for the brunette part, all right, I could give them that. No one ever knew, of course, that the same type applied when I was in the mood to cross over to the other side.

Melinda and I dated until I left uni and went to St Barts for my medical studies. Most of it was habit. Or, as my shrink might say, it was familiar. We did not ever really ‘break up’; it was more an erosion. A wearing away.

I did actually see her one day after my return to London, when I was near St Barts for an appointment. She was heavily pregnant and holding a toddler by one hand. That could have been my life, I realised at the moment. A nice job at a surgery, wife, children. Probably a dog. All very pleasant.

And it was the prospect of just such a future that had sent me to war.

I actually hid on that day, stepping behind a bus shelter so that Melinda would not see me. This is what I had become: a haggard, tired man using an ugly cane and not giving a damn about anything. Except, apparently, the possibility of being seen by a woman he used to sleep with.

Eventually, no matter how much I hated it, I had to go home, although using that word for the nasty little room left the taste of ashes in my mouth.

The sniper was playing his music again. I would have expected some kind of discordant, harsh metal rock, but instead it was always really old stuff. A lot of Vera Lynn, for some freaking reason. But played so loudly that it might as well have been Black Sabbath. From experience, I knew that the music would go on until the drunk was driven crazy enough to go pound on the guy’s door and yell for him to shut the fuck up.

My mail had been shoved under the door. There was only one envelope, with the insignia of the RAMC in the corner of the envelope. I picked it up and immediately dropped it onto the table without opening it. Instead, I made myself a cup of tea, forgetting that I was out of milk. I did find a half-empty packet of Hob-Nobs in the cupboard, so that would be dinner.

I sat at the desk and stared at the envelope. There was little doubt in my mind of what the letter inside would say, but as long as I didn’t open it, the truth would remain unknown. Reminded me of that damned cat. Right now, I was still an army surgeon and I was also nothing but a sad, unwanted civilian, all at the same time.

For some reason, I thought of my mother and the last time I had seen her.

It was just before I shipped out on my first tour of Afghanistan. She was already sick with the cancer that would kill her and so looked pale and fragile. But, then, she had always looked pale and fragile in the middle of the chaos that had been our family life.

Her home health aide hovered in the background, as Mum studied me in my uniform. “How handsome you look, Johnny. My, your father would have been so proud of his boy being a soldier.”

Well, we would never know that, would we, since the old man had run his car into a tree three years ago. Luckily, he was the only casualty. Also luckily, I didn’t give a damn if he would have been proud of me or not.

Mum was not happy to hear that I was on my way to war. I promised to be careful and to write often.

I wrote twice before she died a few months later.

Finally, I opened the envelope from the RAMC.

*

I hate the nightmares. The only thing almost worse is not sleeping at all. Staring at the spider web cracks on the ceiling that I could see only because the curtain over the window had fallen down several days earlier and I hadn’t bothered to put it back up. The light from the street lamp right outside the building cast a sickly yellow glow into the room. So I stared at the cracks and imagined the life of the pretend spider.

Finally, I rolled out of the bed and got dressed again. It had turned chilly so I pulled on my nicest jumper. Might as well walk some more.

The drunk was having a smoke on the pavement out front. “Mind how you go,” he said as I walked past.

I only grunted a reply. 

Somehow, I ended up down by the V&A. Their special late-night opening was just breaking up, apparently, so I sat on one of the benches in front and watched the crowd. I had always liked the V&A, but had not been there in years. Perhaps I should spend an afternoon there soon.

I added that to the list of things I planned to do, but probably wouldn’t.

Living an actual life was right at the top of the list.

While watching the crowd disperse and for no good reason at all, I remembered a conversation from Afghanistan. Late one night, on the heels of a dreadful forty-eight hours of battle casualties pouring into the medical facility in a never-ending stream. The doctors, me included, were all like zombies.

But there was still one stop I had to make before finally falling into my camp bed.

He was not going to make it, barring a miracle and I am not inclined to count on intervention from any heavenly source. I made the usual check of his vitals and then realised that someone else had approached. A young sergeant was standing there, still covered in dust and some blood that had dried on his uniform. He was staring at the man in the bed.

“Friend of yours?” I asked, replacing the chart into its holder.

“Best mate,” the sergeant said. “He and I were the only two who made it out of the Coyote alive.” He glanced at me. “He doesn’t look good.”

“I’m afraid he isn’t,” I said. That was as far as I was willing to go.

“He’s dying, isn’t he?”

I said nothing, which said everything.

“I should be dead, too,” the young man said in an anguished voice. “Why should I be alive?”

Weariness was on me like a heavy blanket. “It is what it is,” I said without thinking. And I actually shrugged as I said the words.

Now, he stared at me, with something like horror on his face. My bedside manner was usually a lot better than that.

A nurse approached and I took the opportunity to flee. 

Finally, in my camp bed, with the clack-clack of helicopters overhead, I thought about what I had said.

_It is what it is._

*

One more thing that has come back to bite me in the arse.

I dragged myself from the past, back to the bench in London. Only a few pedestrians were passing by now, although the road was still filled with traffic. I was starting to feel the chill, so knew that it was time to move on. I walked aimlessly, paying no real attention to where I was going or the name of the small side street I turned into.

In fact, I was pretty oblivious to everything, up until the moment something, or someone, hit me in the back hard enough to send me face down onto the pavement. Immediately, I felt the hot blood gush from my nose. My cane rolled away and a foot kicked me in the side. Then I felt hands searching quickly through my pockets and finding my wallet. I turned my head and saw the two of them, thugs in football jerseys. One more quick search to make sure they hadn’t missed anything; finally, one of them ripped the watch off my wrist. It was only a cheap thing bought on Portobello Road before I went to Afghanistan, so I didn’t much care. The wallet was more of an issue, although they would no doubt be disappointed with the lone fiver inside. And with what would happen if they tried to use the bank card. At least, they left me the coins tucked in the inside pocket of my jacket, although that was probably because they missed them. Luckily, I had forgotten to bring my phone.

At last, they were gone. I managed to find the damned cane and get to my feet.

I only had one tissue in my pocket and that didn’t do much good on my battered and bleeding nose. On the upside, it was late night in London, so no one paid me any mind as I stumbled along Cromwell Road.

I spotted the open caff on the other side of the road and decided to go in, despite my appearance, and hope that I had sufficient coins left to pay for cup of coffee. And maybe I could grab some paper serviettes for my poor nose.

So this was my life, it seemed. John Watson, ex-soldier and former doctor, now just one more wreck on the shore of the long-vanished Empire. I almost wanted to chuckle. Afghanistan had a lot to answer for.

I dodged a few cars getting across the road and, for the first time in a while, thought about the pistol hidden in the drawer. And that’s a lie. I thought about the gun every day, sometimes with a frightening level of desire. Tonight was one of those times. I guess it was a good thing that I dodged the cars instead of running in front of one on purpose.

Through the window, I could see a green-haired young man reading a paperback behind the counter and only one customer sitting in a booth. That customer was a tall, slender man with a mess of dark curls. He seemed intent on his cake. I watched him raise a bite to his mouth, slip it inside and then chew slowly. He seemed to be enjoying it. I watched him take another bite.

Finally, I pushed open the door, causing a tiny bell to sound, and went into the caff.

**


End file.
